


Haunted Heart

by stainedglassflood



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Curses, False Identity, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, LOOSELY mythology inspired, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Slow To Update, [shrug emoji], and ch1 was written freehand so the rhythm is odd, because. listen. if anyone would baz would, because. well. goblin., but also it's like... soppy angst? i think? rather than like... harrowing?, but also..., melodramatic monologues, mysterious voices in the woods, okay i'm not sure if there are specific qualifications for 'heavy' angst but this has, references to death depression and terrible parent figures, subtlety? not in my house, unbeta'ed because i am an actual goblin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 06:45:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17934818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stainedglassflood/pseuds/stainedglassflood
Summary: A chance encounter in a darkened theatre draws Baz into a spiralling web of half-truths, lies and secrets, and as the connection grows closer it becomes ever more dangerous to keep up the pretense. But he's never exactly been sensible when it comes to Simon Snow.





	Haunted Heart

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inspired by In the Dark by hollyanneg, which is also a carry on fic, but like... ten times gentler than this one. you should read it: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16786693  
> (it's also very loosely inspired by the myth of cupid and psyche, but at this point it's more like i'm referencing it than rewriting it.)
> 
> title taken from the song by wild (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pIg3KEdTE), though it's mostly atmosphere/mood inspiration rather than direct lyrical parallels.  
> also, this fic sort of rose out of the ashes of another that i abandoned for being too intense and too negative, so 'burn' by the cure is also sort of inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfTkL-ZHDCY
> 
> (also, i'm coming out of a five-year dry spell of writing and still relearning everything, and this is the most publicly i've ever shared any work of fiction. please be nice! okay cool thanks for reading)

BAZ

 

The first time he found me, I was crying.

He couldn’t tell, of course, the old theatre block was labyrinthine and dark as death, and any Pitch worth the name knows how to weep silently – but I still felt exposed. A deer in the headlights. Undead heart beating faster than it had any right to on a night when it hadn’t even granted me the strength to hunt.

He was at the bottom of the spiral stairs, peering out over the stage with his sword gleaming in his hand, and he called out – “Hello? Who’s there?”

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move.

He was looking for a fight – had been spoiling for one all week – and I just couldn’t find the will to humour him any more. To keep on acting like the perfect soldier. My mask had been slipping before – cold silences betrayed by white knuckles and too-tight ties – but that night it was gone. Shattered. Useless. I could feel its absence in every inch of my skin.

If he fought me like this, it might be the end.

He stepped off the final stair gingerly, testing the floor as he went, and I forced myself to stand up, trying to draw back into the deepest shadows.

“You can’t hide,” he warned, voice lower. “I know there’s someone there.” Then he swallowed, hands tensing around his sword’s hilt, and it was clear how that thought ended – _Or something._

(It was never clear which I was to him.)

He chewed his lip, waiting one, two, three seconds for a response before coming deeper into the room, holding onto a wall. I held my breath, but from the way he was fumbling, it didn’t seem like he could see anything at all. He didn’t even glance at me.

I stepped hesitantly back, trying to judge if I could bolt up the staircase without being caught, when I realised that my idiot roommate was walking more boldly, and had almost reached the edge of the stage.

Blind, at the edge of a six-foot drop, holding a sword level with his throat.

That death was not worthy of Simon Snow.

I allowed myself a resigned sigh, then darted over and pulled him back by his arm. He whipped around, grabbing for me. I pulled out of his grasp and ducked his sword, but he was still squinting at me. The faint glow of moonlight from the stairwell was enough for him to make out my silhouette.

“Who _is_ that?” he demanded. “What are you doing?”

“You almost fell.” My voice was weak, my enunciation poor. Simon still didn’t seem to recognise me.

His eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a drop.” I swallowed, and tried to sound like someone else. “You’re on a stage.”

My voice came out faintly Egyptian. I said a silent apology to my grandmother for using her accent like this when I still hadn’t mastered the language. (We had plenty of Arabic books, but I had to learn to speak it from Fiona, and she always turned prickly and tearful after a few hours. I never felt quite right asking her to do something that never stopped reminding her that we were the only Pitches left.)

“A stage?” Simon still sounded suspicious.

“This was a theatre.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” He gestured with his sword, making me flinch out of the light. “It’s the dead of night.”

“I’m a pupil,” I said, because I’d already invested all the energy I had left for deception in the accent. “I just like it here.”

“In the dark?”

“It’s peaceful.” I sighed shakily, and let him hear it. “I have nightmares.”

Simon blinked at me, still trying to make out my face, and lowered his sword slightly. He licked his lips. “Is this your… you know, _place_?”

“This building belongs to the school.”

“No, I mean…” He dragged a hand through his hair nervously, but the look he was giving me seemed sympathetic. “Are you, like, a ghost? Or something?”

I laughed faintly. “No.”

It felt like a lie.

“I’m looking for someone,” Simon said, because when I wasn’t myself he could trust me just like that. “A boy in my year – have you seen anyone?”

I shook my head, then (too late) managed, “No.”

“So it’s just been you here?” He peered around, shaking his head. “How can _this_ help with nightmares?”

My heart was still in my throat. I just wanted him to leave me alone. “I told you. The dark is calming.”

“You feel safe when you can’t see anything?”

“Nothing can see me, either.”

He looked at me then, looked into my eyes like he could actually see them, and for once his curiosity felt kind. I’d seen this before, in his quests and adventures, when school was just starting and he believed in himself, in prophecy and justice and heroic destiny. When he was all laughter and wide eyes and fresh air with a hint of woodsmoke. Magic and wisdom and good. But he’d never turned this face on _me_.

It was dazzling.

And I didn’t want him to leave then – I wanted him to keep frowning at me with his head tilted and lips apart, freckles blurred in the gloom, curls wild as ever and glimmering with rain-

I was caught.

Not a deer in the headlights, but a moth to a flame.

 

SIMON

 

The theatre felt magickal that night.

I know – I _know_ everything at Watford is magickal. I’m not a complete idiot. What I mean is, the theatre felt… right. Fated. Like a portent. Like a _beginning_. Something had aligned, had fallen elegantly into place in the dark, and I could feel it in the air – for whatever reason, that was where I was meant to be.

Maybe that’s a stupid reason to stop looking for your murderous roommate, especially when your alternative was hanging out in the dark with someone you were still pretty sure was a soft-spoken ghost – but that feeling doesn’t happen often. Doesn’t come back if it’s lost. And I really needed to feel like I was on the right path that night.

My eyes weren’t really adjusting – I’d basically already lost him in the shadows, was only following his voice – so I turned in place and gazed around the theatre. The dark was so deep I couldn’t tell if the ceiling was two or twenty feet above me. It might as well have been a starless sky. I reached out a hand, just making sure, then quickly drew it back. Then I realised that that was stupid too, since Ghost Boy couldn’t see me either.

“If this was a theatre,” I asked, “why aren’t there any windows?”

There was a sound like a shiver, or maybe a stifled laugh, then after a second, “Theatres never have windows.”

“Yes, they do.” I held a hand in front of my face and flexed my fingers. “The Globe has windows. And an open roof. And it’s not _underground_.”

Something creaked, and when the boy spoke again, he was further away. “Well… old-fashioned theatres, yes. But mages developed artificial lighting and special effects centuries earlier than Normals. And smoke and mirrors are far more effective in the dark.”

“Where are you going?” I stepped further into the room. I breathed in a wave of dust and wood varnish, then gritted my teeth, trying not to breathe too fast.

Fabric rustled, and I caught a flicker of movement – like someone turning on their heel.

“I’m sitting down, Chosen One.” He said it like he meant to be sharp, but he just seemed… tired. Fragile. “You can put the sword away.”

I scuffed a foot against the floorboards, then sheathed my blade.

This was just a boy. A sleepless, haunted boy who’d taken refuge somewhere old and hidden from the rest of the school. He didn’t deserve to be treated like something dangerous.

I turned, reaching until my fingers brushed the wood panels of the wall, and then sat down where I hoped was opposite him.

“This place is nice,” I said. Trying to sound warmer. “How did you find it?”

He laughed softly. “How did you?”

I laughed too. The heart of Watford – not the courtyard or the Chapel, but the old hub of classrooms and halls – was a twisting web of corridors and covered bridges, of secret passageways and hidden doors. It was easier to find secrets – and harder to find your way – at the full moon or the witching hour, or if you only walked counter-clockwise. A lot of it seemed to come and go on its own whims.

“I got lost,” I said. Because it was true. (Most of these buildings were disused; the Mage said making pupils find their classes through secret tunnels was mediaeval and inefficient.) “But… you don’t seem lost. You seem like you know this place.”

He tapped his fingers against his clothes. “I do. I… don’t get a lot of sleep. So I’ve had time to learn my way around.”

“I think it might be important. Like, maybe there’s something going to happen here- or something I have to do…”

His tapping stopped. “Is this to do with the person you were looking for?”

“I… I don’t know.” Something scraped in my chest, tense and white-hot, and I tried to shove it down again. “This isn’t exactly his usual lair. But he knows I know where he used to scheme, so maybe this is… I don’t know.” I closed my eyes for a second. Scrubbed my hands across my face. “I don’t really want to talk about it right now. Unless you can give me the key to all his secrets or a potion to make him less evil, or… something.”

He let out a sigh so soft it was almost silent. “I can’t.” It was so quiet I could hear his hair shift – like he’d run a hand through it, or tipped his head back. “I don’t think I can help you with your quest, Chosen One.”

“It’s my quest,” I said, twisting my fingers into my hair. “I would never ask someone else to fight for me. I just thought you might be able to… tell me something.”

“No.” He made it sound like a confession.

I squared my shoulders, then looked at where I guessed he was. “It doesn’t have to be that. I don’t even know what I’m looking for – this might not be about him. Just… tell me about the theatre. Please.”

“About the theatre?”

“The theatre, the dark… Why you- why you find it- Like... If it’s calming, how-”

“How does it help?” the boy asked, cautiously, and I nodded, rubbing my neck.

He was quiet for a long moment, and the dark and silence swelled, threatening to grow teeth and whisper through my shattered thoughts, to circle me and bring back the voice I’d been trying forget all night – and then his voice broke through, settling it all with a careful _Okay_.

All his words were careful, half-hushed but pronounced delicately, like this story might break if he told it wrong.

“This is a place where magic meets its source. Where life is breathed into stories younger than us or older than our own language. Where stories that have been told word for word, over and over, for hundreds or thousands of years can breathe power into the world…” He brushed a hand over the wall, then got to his feet.

“It’s been a few years since the stage was last used, but you can still feel it in the air. In the resonance. Ancient magic. History.” He paused, letting the faintest echo of his voice linger in the air, then turned to me. “You hear it?”

I knew he was putting on a show, but the hair on my arms was standing up anyway. I tilted my head up, eyes searching, and breathed, “Yeah.”

“The past is so close here,” he said, voice catching on- _something_. (Honour? Longing? Grief?) “People think it’s foreign, a different world, but it’s not. Our lives are someone else’s history. And as long as we’re telling the old stories, we can be almost… timeless. In no time, and in every time.”

He took my wrist, lightly circling it with two fingers, and pulled me away from the wall, a few steps deeper into the true dark. I searched his silhouette, but even though we were practically toe to toe, I couldn’t make out anything beyond the suggestion of a hood.

“The floorboards are worn here,” he said, stepping back. (He was always slipping back, whipping away like he’d burn if he got too close.) “Centre stage. Weighed down with monologues. There are paths worn into the wood, as well, loops and figures of eight from sword fights and ballroom dances, practiced so often you can still follow them step by step…”

I ran my shoes slowly over the wood, feeling it rise and fall along the footsteps. Something swooped in my chest, complicated and wanting.

“It’s strange,” he murmured to the shadows, “how we can still make out every step, but can’t tell which was the waltz and which was the duel.”

When he spoke again, he was close. Standing in the footsteps opposite mine.

“They say there are only seven stories in existence.” Something pressed and earnest was bleeding into his formerly polished manner. “Throughout history and fiction, we play out the same stories to make sense of the same horrors until the tale has more power than the tellers. Until the roles take on a magic of their own. Hero. Villain. Destiny.” His voice faded a little. “Evil is real. But even that can’t change the story.”

He stepped further back, drawing me to follow him along the mirror of his path. Soft fabric brushed my arm, and I thought it was him for a second until a breeze fluttered through it, and I realised it was the curtain.

I wanted to reach out for him, to take his wrist or his shoulder just to feel something solid and real to keep me from drowning in this dreamlike dark. But I couldn’t just… _grab_ someone. He might have hit me. Or run. Or turned to mist beneath my hands.

We came to a stop by the far wall. I could make out a void behind the boy that I guessed was a stairwell mirroring the one I entered through, but I couldn’t see any light coming from it. A draught was still sending shivers through the edge of the curtain.

The boy breathed in deeply, then let it out as a shaky, voiceless laugh. I wasn’t sure why he was laughing, but I was unsteady enough that I started too, and that set him off further, into runaway, owl-like giggles (too loud in the theatre) that he tried to curb by covering his mouth. (In the centre of the echoes that the theatre made unearthly, I suddenly remembered that we were past curfew, out of bounds. The moment felt secret and lawless, like laughing with this stranger in the dark was too dangerous for the outside world to see.)

“Stop it,” he hissed, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “You’re undermining my stage presence.”

“That’s part of the job, though, isn’t it?” I said, half-grinning, catching my breath. “You seem like you can handle it. And it’s not like I’ve started throwing things.”

“It wouldn’t matter if you did,” he said lightly. “It would pass right through my ghostly form.”

I froze for a second, then snorted and rubbed the back of my neck. “It wasn’t _that_ stupid. Like, with all the weird shit I’ve seen over the years, I had to ask.”

He paused for a second, then stepped closer. “I suppose. But-” (still fighting to keep amusement out of his voice) “-did you _really_ just describe the wondrous discovery that is the World of Mages as ‘all that weird shit’?”

I winced. (It sounded worse coming from him.) “I meant it in a good way! Mostly.” I picked at a callous on my sword hand. “I mean… I could do without the monsters. And the Pitches, and the war. But I guess it’s my job to… deal with all that.”

The boy drew back, turning away slightly. His breath was quick and shallow – and almost hesitant. Like he was trying to back away unheard. “Deal with them?”

His voice was cold.

My mouth felt dry. I ducked my head, avoiding his gaze even though neither of us could see the other. “Not like that. I mean, not… not unless I have to.” I still felt like I was being stared at, scrutinised, and I stumbled on: “I mean, I don’t _want_ to- to- Like, if there’s any other way-”

“Naturally. The moral hand-wringing of idealistic heroes is of course far more important than actually doing your duty to protect people.”

The words fell like a blow to my face. I flinched back and stared into the darkness, mouth hanging open dumbly. I made myself close it, gritting my teeth till it hurt, and searched for the words.

 _Fuck off,_ my brain suggested. I dug my nails into palms.

_I’m not-_

_You can’t-_

_That’s not fair._

The last words scratched my throat. I was so tired by that point, so worn down by fear and magic and rage, I wasn’t sure how much I’d said aloud.

My ears felt hot, my breath uneven, and I squared my shoulders, still glaring. My brain was helpfully running through a long list of things the boy could point out right now to win, and the more it said the more it sounded like Baz, or like the voice in the Woods-

“You’re a good listener,” the boy said.

He whispered it, voice taut and uncertain. Unsteady. Like he hadn’t meant to say anything at all.

“What?” (I was almost whispering too.)

“You’re decisive when you need to be, but until then, you _listen_. You’re always listening, searching for magic or justice or the truth, and you feel everything you find so strongly-” He stopped, breath held, then said almost voicelessly, “You’re the kind of person stories are for.”

“…Oh.” My face was still hot, but now I felt less shamed and more… _seen_. My sword hand unclenched, and went back to my neck. “Well… Mage’s Heir, and all that. Can never resist a mystery.”

The boy smoothed his clothing and tugged on some of his hair (tucked it back?). His voice was still ever so slightly unsteady. “Then you’re in the right place.”

We both let the echo hang in the air.

(I tipped my head up to gaze at the starless dark, then looked back to the boy or ghost or shadow, and I thought he might be looking back.)

After a second, he began to speak again. Still hushed, still earnest, but not to so careful any more. Like the words were burning their way out.

“There are only seven stories, but there are infinite ways to tell any of them. The path is fixed, but the details can change. And those details that get lost or forgotten as the story passes on…” His voice dropped to a whisper, soft and forbidding and terrible. “Sometimes they’re the most beautiful parts.” He curled his hand into the curtain, pulling it taut. “Backstage is full of half-forgotten props and costumes. Countless mysteries in the making, just waiting to be lost. A shattered mirror that glitters like ice. Angel wings and blindfolds. Teddy bears. Skulls. Candlesticks and chess pieces, crowns of roses and crowns of thorns… Stories, waiting to become secrets. Secrets, waiting to become nothing at all. Countless pointless beautiful things.”

My heartbeat crashed in my ears like the sea. Silence stretched between us, and with every second he seemed closer and further away. I was so aware that I could reach out and touch him, and so aware that I wouldn’t dare.

He needed me to say something, but I didn’t know what it was. All I could do was steady my voice and ask, “Can I see?”

He drew in a breath, then let it out slowly, through his teeth. The curtain fell back into place. When he spoke, something in his manner had shifted – had closed. The air of performance was gone, but the words felt less true.

“There’s not much point in the dark.”

 

*

 

BAZ

 

I stepped back into the inky stairwell, waited one breath, then two, then turned and raced down the spiral stairs, into the basement that led to the Catacombs. I could move almost silently when I had to, and far, far too fast – if I were lucky, Snow wouldn’t be on my tail.

I crushed a coin into the angel carved in the wall, tore open the hidden door, shut it with passive-aggressive gentleness, and then slumped to the floor against it, head in shaking hands. I’d gone years – _years_ – without letting a single thing slip in front of Snow. Infatuation, hunger, weakness, Old Families secrets, _my_ secrets – I’d hidden everything. I’d all but resigned myself to taking it to the grave. And then he’d cast his mundane blue eyes on me just once, asked for help _once_ – and I’d spilled out my fucking soul to him just to settle his stutter. (My figurative soul. While making him think I unquestionably had a literal one.)

Not since I’d first fallen for the bastard had I done anything so outrageously, suicidally _stupid_. I could feel my ancestors’ empty gaze boring into me through the crypt, could feel their shame, their disgust – _weak, treacherous, desperate boy_. But even then I couldn’t stop seeing Simon’s awestruck face, couldn’t stop hearing his whispered laughter and feeling his presence, close and powerful and all the more agonising for his lack of hostility…

 _This is it_ , I thought, clawing a hand through my hair. _He’s finally driven me insane_ _._

 

SIMON

 

It took me too long to realise the boy was gone. I couldn’t even pick out a point when he’d left (or fled, or disappeared) – the shadows didn’t shift when they took him. I just found myself stepping forward, reaching out, and feeling my hand fall through the space where he had been.

I turned around, looking back into the theatre blindly, called out once ( _‘Hello? Are you still here?’_ ), but the night felt different without him – cold, raw, hungry. My ears were ringing, my magic burning dizzily through my veins, everything reminding me how exposed and unstable the night had left me.

I closed my eyes (what difference would it even make?) and slumped against the doorway, resting my forehead on the cool stone.

I still didn’t know what I’d been looking for.

I was only in seventh year. No matter what had happened that night, no matter if I had slain a dragon or found the fairies or staked my roommate through the heart, the prophecy would still have been lying in wait for me. And there was no preparing for that. All I could do was make sure I stayed alive until the day I was meant to fix things.

I _was_ meant to fix things. No matter what anyone said. There was a reason I was there.

But no matter how the prophecy ended, I had an oath to keep. A duty. The whole night was echoing and overlapping through my mind, and I still couldn’t find the right path through it. It was all so much to take in – had the boy had a message I hadn’t understood? What if I’d driven him away before he could tell me that there was something I had to do? What if he _had_ fled, and I was meant to save him?

Standing alone in that cold, silent dark, I wasn’t even sure that he hadn’t been a monster himself.

 

BAZ

 

I let myself fall deeper into the catacombs, running in mindless twists and spirals in the vain hope of purging my emotions. And because I hadn’t a clue how to proceed. Was Snow still looking for me – for either version of me – or had he gone back to the tower? I couldn’t risk facing him again tonight – not when his paranoia was still building, not so soon after proving I couldn’t trust myself around him – but I had no way of knowing how to stay away from him. And if he did go back to our room, finding that I still wasn’t there might well set him back on the chase.

I slammed into a corner and drew a breath through gritted teeth. I was meant to better than this. The Pitch heir should have been stronger than to fall for the enemy, wiser than to let him see, braver than to run. A better son would not cower in the crypt with the dead and the dust and the vermin.

A better son would have already won.

I slid down the wall and lit a flame in my hands, watching its ruby red light flicker through the cage of my fingers. Flaring brighter, then darkening, then bright again.

I could never hide from Simon forever. The longer I stayed away, the more volatile I ensured we would both be when we found each other again. And if I waited for him to come to me, I was giving up control of the situation. There would be no margin for error after everything I’d said in the theatre.

The flame curled to a scarlet ribbon that wound a figure of eight around my wrists, and my hands closed into loose fists.

No matter how I hated it, no matter if I were going to lose, I had to keep fighting. Snow was a wildfire and a pawn of the Mage, of a tyrant who would do anything to destroy my family. And I was the best weapon they had left.I had to protect them. I had a duty.

 

SIMON

 

I called my sword and dashed up the stairs, out of the theatre, into the moonlight. The wind almost knocked me over, ripping icy claws through my hair, and I broke into a run.

The wind was howling – I could hear it hissing and creaking through the Wavering Wood – but in the theatre, it had been silent. What else hadn’t I heard? What could be hiding from me, even now? There were countless monsters that hunted with illusions, with silver tongues and secrets and a way of lulling you into accepting that you’d never seen their face or learnt their name-

I hit a dead end and spun on my heel, scanning the streets. I’d been turning corners recklessly, zigzagging like I was trying to shake off the Manticorps, but I’d backed myself into a corner. And I didn’t know where I was.

Leaves rattled and scratched over the cobbles. Shadows shifted in the overhangs. My knuckles were white on my sword as my gaze fumbled in ten directions at once.

I wasn’t sure if the boy in the theatre had been a monster, but I knew there were dark creatures in the night. Even at Watford. (Especially at Watford.) No matter how we increased our defences, the monsters kept finding new hiding places – for snakes’ sake, a monster sat behind me in Greek. Slept in a bed three feet from mine. And prowled the crypts at night.

Something hollow and not quite animal cried in the Wood. My magic buzzed in my fingertips.

The Wood had been darker than usual that evening. Paths I’d thought I knew had twisted and tripped and grown claustrophobic with thorns closing in around me, until they’d spat me out into a circle of jagged bone-white standing stones.

The wind picked up, and I scrambled backwards until my shoulders were pressed against the wall behind me.

There had been no wind inside the stone circle. Just mist and cold and a low, echoing groan like whale song. I’d tried to leave, but my feet had been numb and immovable in my boots, so I’d raised my sword, which turned to mist in my hands. And then the voice had started, ringing and shattering like a waterfall.

_Ignorant blundering mortal. Trying to bring your wars to holy ground._

I’d tried to apologise, to say I was lost, that it was a mistake, that I had helped the Wood in the past, but the voice had laughed at me. (Then I’d spun on my heel, thinking I saw a figure behind me, but it’d disappeared.)

The voice had always sounded like it was right on the back of my neck.

I tried to focus on the alley in front of me, blinked hard and gripping my sword. Light was creeping along the veins in my wrists.

_Little knight. Little Chosen One. Little dragon-slayer._

The words had been mocking, but the voice had been slick with disgust. Something like a finger had brushed across my face, and I had frozen completely by then. Unable even to flinch.

_You would wield that sword and call yourself a hero? Stand before us and think yourself immortal?_

My hands were shimmering white-hot. An incandescent streak flickered up my sword’s blade, and I flung it away from me, letting it clatter across the cobbles. Shaking, I closed my eyes, and held my head in my hands.

The voice had been wrong. The voice _was_ wrong. I’d told myself that then, growled it out loud, heard the words echo in the mist, and the voice had practically purred.

_You are not special, Simon Snow. We have seen dozens like you and their stories’ ends._

_You are a weapon._

_A sacrifice._

_A bomb._

I had to calm down. I couldn’t afford to panic like this, not at Watford. Not without a target for my overflowing power. But the whispers from the woods kept replaying in my mind, taunting and knowing and cold.

 _You are the monster forged to slay the monster,_ it had hissed. _You were made to drag the dark down with you._

Its grip on me had loosened, then, and I had been thrown from the circle. Something that might have been a silhouette had appeared at the edge of the mist, and I’d felt a long-fingered hand settle over my heart. Cold as ice, clawed like thorns.

 _Ashes to ashes. Fire to fire._ Its voice had sounded almost pitying by then. _A killer like you must always to be killed._

It had pushed, hard, on my heart, and the mist had swirled around me, creating a vortex. When it had died down, I had found myself inside Watford’s fortress wall again, and mist had been unspooling off my arms.

 _Go on then._ Its voice had been faint by then, but I could still hear its malice. _Find your monster._

 

*

 

I lifted my head. Blinked away grit, like I’d woken up from a nightmare. (Or been crying. Apparently I do that, when my magic gets too much. I don’t always realise.)

The world hadn’t exploded around me.

I was still unstable – the air still smelt of smoke – but it looked like the danger had mostly burnt itself out. The panic was fading, too. Dulling to the kind of dread that’s easy to stamp down and pretend not to feel.

The woodfolk’s anger had been terrifying. But it wasn’t like they were the only ones who’d ever doubted me. And the Mage had always insisted there was no point listening to it. That they were just belittling us because they wanted us to lose focus and faith in ourselves. And he always said it like he really believed it. Believed in me. His gaze righteous and unwavering.

I dragged myself to my feet, grazed my hand over my sword to dismiss it, and tried to trust my destiny.

The walk back to our room felt endless. Even in the cold stone of the spiral staircase I still felt too hot – I kept checking the banister to make sure I wasn’t leaving scorched handprints on the stone – and the warm wood-polish-and-soap smell of the bedroom choked me when I opened the door. I crossed to the window, cracked it open and pressed my forehead against the glass.

I didn’t want to think.

It felt a bit better, being in my own room. I’d never been properly attacked there. Even when I thought Baz might tear my throat out in the middle of Politickal Science, we hardly ever fought in the tower. Because it was pointless, with the Anathema. But also because we were tired.

He looked tired. Asleep under his piles of blankets, jaw and brow still half tensed in the haughty, guarded look that never quite left his face.

His guard never came down, even in sleep. (From how his nightmares sounded, I wasn’t sure I could blame him.) I could only ever get glimpses of what was happening behind his eyes. But he looked a little less dangerous then. For once, he actually seemed… _young_. Raven hair messier than he’d ever permit in the daylight, mouth curving down gently uncut by sneers or fangs, heavy eyelids closed.

There wasn’t much that made sense right then, but I understood this:

Basilton Grimm-Pitch was spiteful, callous, imperious, sly and absolutely indelible. He was my equal and opposite, my perfect enemy, my inevitable rival in the endless perilous dance we’d been dancing for the past six years. Even through the chaos of prophecies and war, he was constant, unflinching, familiar, and as long as he didn’t give up, neither could I.

As long as he knew his role, I knew mine.

 

BAZ

 

Snow dragged himself back into the tower room half an hour after I did. I was facing away from the door, trying to breathe slowly even with the scent of smoke clinging to him, and he seemed to really believe I was asleep, because he shut the door quickly and quietly and didn’t turn on the light. He’d done this in fifth year, too – hunted me all night with his sword drawn and cross burning, then left me in peace when we’d both tired enough to risk returning to the room. It was oddly comforting to feel things fall back into the rhythm of our long-practiced enmity. To know that we still had the right to catch our breath between battles. That we still had time.

Simon made a few soft scuffling sounds that suggested kicking off his shoes, then tiptoed over to the window, opening it slightly. A shaft of moonlight fell through the curtains over my bed. I tried not to blink.

A few deep breaths of night air, then a hesitant padding of bare feet on wood… And the light was half obscured. The air hummed gently with smoke and the smell of cheap apple shampoo, and the back of my neck grew warmer.

Simon Snow was standing by my bedside, gazing down over me.

It suddenly seemed a mercy that I hadn’t hunted that night, and wasn’t capable of blushing. Even if my face still felt like it was burning under his gaze.

He stayed for a long moment, breath quietening and settling, until a breeze brushed my hair into my face. Then he walked back to the window, closed it gently, and clambered into his bed.

A trapped moth beat its wings against the walls of my heart.

I hunched my shoulders and hid my face in my pillow, biting back tears for the second time that night, and did all I could to be cold. Because this weakness, this longing, was lunacy. I’d known it for years. No matter what I did, there was nothing down this path for me but a violent demise.

That night had been a miracle. But it could never happen again.

 


End file.
